I'm 42 with a 7 month old - want more but am EXHAUSTED

[katrina2017]

@gordon63 They may be rich and the mom can be a SAHM by choice or the opposite (if you have 3 kids, daycare is expensive so probably much cheaper for one of them to quit working and usually it’s the mother). Lots of people don’t consider money before they have kids (usually younger parents) and I agree that what kids need most is love, but financial stability can go a long way in providing a good secure future (along with holidays, hobbies, fun, etc.) I don’t think there is right or wrong, it’s more what is right for you as a person and parent - we’re lucky (combined with life choices) to be in a good financial position and being able to offer our little one what we couldn’t afford. Adding another to the mix means I’ll have to take another step back in my career, combined with more sacrifices for another little human. Whilst I like the idea, I think the execution would place too significant of a strain on my mental health & quality of life.

 

[gordon63]

@katrina2017 I think this is where I'm at right now, tbh. While I agree with my husband that our lives in the long term will be fundamentally richer with another child (especially my son's life), and I feel like depriving him of a sibling would be stealing his long-term joy, I know my mental health and quality of life would suffer. My career is already stepping back - before kids, I could work 15-hour days on a ton of time zones and now I have to work a normal 9-to-6. I'm an entrepreneur, so time not working is time not earning. My husband has a great job and together we make good money (not 1%ers but close to that most years) but I just cannot spend another month writing multiple five-figure checks for "landscaping" or "doors" or "helmet to fix his flat spot" or some other unexpected but necessary home reno or childcare expense until my hypothetical second son is in school.

 

[anonbeliever]

@gordon63 Your experience growing up won’t define your kid’s experiences. It sounds like you’ve attributed a lot of your past unhappiness to being an only child, but having a sibling would not have solved all your problems and even if it did help with some of them, it probably would have added others. The most important thing is that you don’t project these negative feelings about being an only child into your kid bacause that’s not fair to them. This is the exact kind of thing therapy is perfect for; what finally got me to start going was wanting to avoid passing on my generational trauma.

According to research, only children are not any less likely to make friends as an adult:

https://researchaddict.com/only-child-effects/

Here’s another article discussing the research of adding a second child.

https://researchaddict.com/second-child/

 

[unsinkable]

@gordon63 My great-grandmother used to say: you can do everything; you just can’t do it all at once.

It sounds like adding another child would require you to temporarily scale back in other areas of your life. Only you can decide if that’s worthwhile to you in the long run.

Personally, I am 34 and have an only child (now 4 years old). I was willing to have another, but my husband wasn’t on board.

 

[gordon63]

@unsinkable Yeah, I've heard that saying too. My husband said that to me earlier today as well - that we'd be giving ourselves temporary comfort if we stopped at one kid, but we'd have less rich lives in the long run and we'd also be hurting our son by not giving him a sibling. .

My response is that I'm not so sure my mental health can handle it. It's not about traveling or sleeping or eating out less, or delaying / deferring some personal or professional goals (note: deferment / abandonment of professional goals after parenthood is often a woman thing, doesn't tend to happen to dads).

It's about the crippling cost of anything remotely related to raising and caring for a child and how much we'd be scaling back our lives. For much of our son's short 7-month life, we've been writing massive (like $10k, $20k, $30k) checks each month and I just want the bleeding to stop.

Husband doesn't understand that having another kid will further decimate our cash position. His attitude is "well that big check was for the down payment and that other big check was for the home renovations; those are one-time costs." But all I see are checks after checks and us bleeding money, and I'm not sure how another child will make things better for us unless I'm Kris Jenner and can monetize the F out of them when they're older.

Why was your husband not on board with having another child, if I may ask?

 

[ackerr]

@gordon63 What made growing up as an only child a bad experience, dear OP? I suppose my question is really whether the bad experience is something that is guaranteed to happen to every only child.

I think there is so much value in being able to do the things you love and having one kid makes 5ks and writing possible.

 

[gordon63]

@ackerr TLDR: my parents were amazing parents but not very social people and they didn’t really bother to make sure I was well-socialized.

I also found the only-child experience otherizing as I was already an outsider due to other factors (growing up mixed race in a super lily-white waspy suburb) so having a sibling wasn’t about having a best friend as much as it was having someone that was weird in the same way that I was weird.

I eventually made friends and learned to love myself, but it took a lot longer. Typical late bloomer stuff.

Basically I don’t want my son to be a late bloomer - I want him to have all the things I never had growing up: vacations where he’s playing with kids, playing in the street until dusk, large chaotic Thanksgivings and Christmases full of joy, a real sense of brotherhood and belonging.